A little diversion from the intended subject... I was getting stuck on the ACW again and this seemed like an interesting topic. It's all recorded and cut, so fingers crossed I'll be able to finish things off on time tommorrow.

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War Room XXVII: New Orleans, 1862

Welcome back to the War Room where we are going to take a look at one of the key Union victories in the American Civil War: the Capture of New Orleans in 1862. This was primarily a brownwater naval enterprise, which is to say it concerns mucking about on rivers, so there are some interesting tactical elements to consider along with the fact that this is a time of transition in naval technology. At the same time, there were operational challenges for both the attackers and defenders, as well as significant strategic drivers. So we’ve got plenty to get stuck into here.

The Strategic Situation

One of the key features of the American Civil War was the disparity in resources between North and South. The North not only had a much larger population- 22.5 million compared to the South’s 9.5 million- but it was massively more industrialised.

In 1860 90% of American manufacturers were in the North. To put this in some kind of perspective, the North started the war with the same number of manufacturing establishments as the South had factory workers- 110,000. The North also had 71% of the railways tracks and produced 97% of the arms.

Naval expansion is always a good indicator of realised industrial potential, given that ships always require a vast array of components from different sectors. The Union Navy didn’t just expand from 42 commissioned ships to 671 over the course of the war, it emerged from the war at the cutting edge of naval technology, transitioning from sail propulsion and wooden armour to a fleet where a third of the vessels were steam powered and 70 were ironclads.

By contrast, the Confederate economy was fundamentally an agricultural export economy. Southern states accounted for 70% of pre-war US exports, 75% of that trade was cotton. The South essentially had a monopoly on global cotton supplies, supplies on which the immense textile industries of Britain and France depended.

So while the Confederacy could not compete with the North in terms of sheer industrial production, it could potentially offset that by overseas trade: exporting cotton to fund the import of arms and other war materiel. In the course of the war, the South even sidestepped its own limited shipbuilding capacity by placing orders with British shipyards.

The obvious problem with this is that the Confederate States inherited an even less impressive navy than the Union- it had a grand total of 14 seaworthy vessels at the start of the war- and its limited industrial base hamstrung its ability to expand.

Union naval superiority allowed them to impose a blockade on the South and start to strangle its vital economic links with Europe. This was a component of General-in-Chief’s Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan, which envisaged economic strangulation of the South as the key to Union victory.

There was some hope in the Confederacy that the Union blockade would backfire diplomatically for the Federals. The South was already reaching out to Britain and France for recognition, support and- in their wildest dreams- intervention. With the blockade impacting the supply of cotton, the textile dependent economies of the European powers would suffer and provoke them into getting involved in the American Civil War.

Even without the threat of naval resistance, enforcing the blockading the south was a difficult prospect. The Confederate States had a combined coastline of 3,500 miles. As such, Union Naval attention focused initially on major Southern ports.

New Orleans

First amongst these was the city of New Orleans. New Orleans was the biggest city in the Confederacy with a population of 160,000- bigger in fact than the next four cities combined- the last major port on the Mississippi River and as such the funnel through which all the resources of the vast Mississippi basin reached the sea.

That made New Orleans a key chokepoint on the Confederate economy, but it posed two big problems for the Union blockade. First of all, there’s 100 miles of Mississippi River Delta between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The delta is a huge area of silt, coastal wetlands and small waterways that extends out into the Gulf. Larger, deeper draught vessels like Union warships, were restricted to a few relatively narrow channels, but the smaller, shallower draft vessels used by blockade runners had a lot more options and could get past the blockade relatively easily.

The obvious counter to this was to simply sail up to New Orleans, seize the city and thus control the real chokepoint, but the deep channel up the delta was protected by two forts: Fort Jackson with 74 guns and Fort St Phillip on the opposite bank with 52. Between them, these fortifications covered a bend in the river where approaching ships would be forced to slow down. Between that, the strong current and a boom placed across the river, Union ships trying to reach New Orleans would have to move past the forts at a crawl, exposing them to concentrated fire.

The combined strength of its coastal fortifications and geographic position meant that the Confederacy did not judge New Orleans to be at significant risk from the sea. To landward, the city was accessible via the Mississippi but it was also as deep in the southern states as it was possible to go.

The river itself was a vital transportation link for Confederate movement, both military and economic. The Southern States just didn’t have the same level of railway infrastructure as the north, so they relied more heavily on riverine communications.

Unfortunately for the South, the Mississippi’s north-south axis meant that it cut the Confederacy in half. The second component of Scott’s Anaconda plan was for Union forces to fight their way down-river from the north, simultaneously denying its use and breaking the South in two.

In early 1862 federal forces had reached Memphis, but this was still 640 miles up-river from New Orleans and there were several important Confederate fortifications barring the way, not least those at Vicksburg.

As a result, the city was considered relatively safe and the garrison was stripped of troops and vessels to be sent north.

By the time the Union focused its attention on the city, it was defended by the 1100 men manning Forts Jackson and St Philip, about 3,000 poorly armed short-term militiamen and a handful of gunboats under the command of Major General Mansfield Lovell.

Lovell did have three tricks up his sleeve though. New Orleans was one of the South’s few centres of industry and in late 1861 the Confederacy began construction on two Ironclads in the city’s shipyards: the CSS Louisiana and CSS Mississippi. Unlike the gunboats defending the city, which were just armed civilian vessels, these were intended to be modern, armoured warships capable of going toe-to-toe with the Union navy.

In March 1862, another Confederate ironclad the CSS Virginia, formerly the USS Merrimack, attacked the Union squadron blockading Norfolk naval base and would have sunk or driven it off completely were it not countered by the presence of the first Northern ironclad, USS Monitor.

Two similar ironclads on the Mississippi would give the federals serious pause for thought if they considered attacking New Orleans. Assuming, of course, that they were completed. Construction was slow going given the South’s limited industrial base. Steam engines of sufficient size presented a particular challenge, as did accumulating enough iron plating for their armour. The race against time to get the two vessels was complicated, to Lovell’s mounting despair, by labour disputes in the shipyards, including a three week strike.

New Orleans could count on the CSS Manassas though. This was already up and running- a steam tug that had been armoured over, fitted with a forward facing 13in gun and a ram. And Manassas already had some battle experience.

Battle of the Head of Passes

Back in October 1861, the Union blockading squadron had taken up a position in the delta called the Head of Passes. This was essentially the centre of a star of channels towards the end of the delta, which the Confederates had believed to be behind some bars inaccessible to deep draught Union vessels.

That rapidly turned out to be untrue and a small squadron stationed there effectively choked off the major routes leading in and out of New Orleans. To counter the Union advance, the Confederates conducted a night attack led by CSS Manassas with a few gunboats and some fire rafts in support.

At 0340 on October the 11th, Manassas snuck up on USS Richmond, a 2700 ton screw sloop, and attempted to ram it. Unluckily for Manassas, Richmond had a barge alongside that night and she hit that instead.

Rather more luckily, panic broke out among the Union vessels which began firing off into the darkness on all sides. This only worsened as Manassas fired a rocket signal and the Confederate gunboats upstream lit and let loose their fire rafts. The rafts didn’t achieve anything, floating down on the current, but the Union flag-officer Captain John Pope ordered a withdrawal.

The Richmond and the Vincennes, another sloop, beached on a bar as they tried to get away, coming under fire from the gunboats, which outranged them. This fire was not very effective- the gunboats only had a small single 6pdr gun each and they barely scored any hits- but it served deepen the Union panic.

The USS Vincennes was actually abandoned at one point, with its captain ordering its magazine blown so the Confederates couldn’t capture it… a further ignominy spared the US Navy by an engineer who lit the fuse to the magazine and then quietly cut the burning end off and tossed it overboard.

In the aftermath of the battle, there were no casualties on either side. The CSS Manassas had probably suffered the most damage as the result of its ram, but the tiny engagement was a clear psychological victory for the Confederacy.

Porter and Farragut

Beyond immediate embarrassment though, the battle kicked New Orleans up the US Navy’s priority list. In late 1861, Commander David Dixon Porter arrived in Washington with a plan to take the city. Porter was an experienced naval officer. His father had commanded the frigate USS Essex during the War of 1812, Porter himself joined the Navy at 16, saw service and received his first command in the Mexican War. Critically for the upcoming operation against New Orleans, he had left the Navy in 1848 and spent some time captaining merchant ships going in and out of the city. Combined with his experience in the Gulf Blockading Squadron after rejoining the Navy at the start of the Civil War, Porter had a detailed understanding of the route upriver and its defences.

Of these, he believed forts Jackson and St Philip posed the greatest problem to an attacking Union fleet. Once past them though, a fleet with enough firepower could simply sail up to New Orleans and force it to surrender under threat of bombardment.

To deal with the forts, Porter intended to use their position against them. The same bend in the river that would slow approaching ships down for the Confederate guns offered a position for a flotilla of mortar vessels to tie up and engage the forts indirectly. Ideally, deluging the forts with mortar bombs would neutralise them. If not, the bombardment would provide cover for the rest of the fleet to rush past. Leaving an army garrison to hold New Orleans, the US Navy could then range further up the Mississippi and ultimately link up with the combined Army-Navy force fighting it’s way southwards.

Porter’s plan was accepted and he was placed in command of the planned mortar flotilla, but the Navy needed another officer to take command of the fleet. Many of the US Navy’s existing officers were needed where they were, others were considered to lack the nerve or experience necessary for the task. Eventually, Porter and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy GV Fox settled on their 37th choice: James Glasgow Farragut.

Farragut was not only tremendously experienced, but he and Porter knew each other very well. Farragut had been adopted as a boy by Porter’s father, serving as a young midshipman in the War of 1812. By 1861, he was 60 years old and had over 50 years of active naval service. With the coming of the Civil War though, the Navy had considered his personal links to the south- by birth and twice by marriage- potential for Confederate sympathies and shunted him sideways into the Naval Retirement Board where he couldn’t make much trouble.

In the event, Farragut was vehemently anti-secession and jumped at the chance to lead the attack.

Running the Forts

By April 1862 then, Farragut’s fleet has gotten into position downstream of the forts. Each of Porter’s mortar schooners mounted a single 13in mortar. In total he had 21 of these and, with the flotilla holding position around the bend, just below where the Confederates had cleared the bankside foliage to extend their fields of fire, they opened fire on April the 18th.

The bombardment was nowhere near as effective as Porter had hoped. Most of the damage appeared cosmetic and the fighting capability of the forts was barely reduced. Farragut having never placed much faith in the mortars, was already preparing to the make the run past the forts.

On the night of the 20th, he sent gunboats forward to cut the boom across the river, but prevailing winds from the north that would have slowed his ships in the run delayed his actual attack until the morning of the 24th.

The Confederates had not been idle while all this was going on. Lovell had sent his own flotilla down to the forts, led by Manassas. The CSS Mississippi was on the verge of being launched, but was still awaiting delivery of its drive shaft. Louisiana was afloat and indeed commissioned, but had such teething trouble with its underpowered engines that it couldn’t move under its own power. Lovell had it towed down and tied to the bank near Fort St Philip to act as a floating battery.

Farragut started his attack at 0200, splitting his 17 ships into three divisions. Confederate lookouts raised the alarm as the first division reached the gap in the boom at about 0340, but eight ships had gotten through before the forts opened fire.

All hell rapidly broke loose. The Confederates had lit fires along the riverbank to illuminate the passing ships, letting fire rafts loose into the current and engaging them from the forts while Porter’s mortars throwing shells overhead and the Union warships started pumping broadsides into the fortifications. Farragut’s orders were to keep going at all costs- the wooden fleet had more guns in total, but there was no way it would survive a slugging match against the pre-ranged masonry forts.

The combination of night and chaos made accuracy a challenge though. The Manassas moved in to attempt a ram, but found itself engaged from the shore and withdrew to try again upstream. The Confederate tug Mosher pushed a fire raft into the USS Hartford- Farrugut’s flagship- being sunk by a broadside for its trouble but briefly forcing the Hartford aground.

Most of the Union fleet made it through without suffering significant damage, though the last three gunboats turned back in the face of all the fire.

Beyond the forts, Farragut’s ships engaged the Confederate flotilla. Manassas managed to ram the USS Mississippi and the USS Brooklyn, failing to sink either before being rammed herself by Mississippi and being forced ashore where she was pummelled with broadsides. The crew abandoned ship, Manassas caught fire and then drifted down river where it later exploded and sank.

The lead Federal vessel, USS Varuna, got into a fight with the Governor Moore, a Confederate gunboat, which ended with Moore ramming Varuna twice and sinking her, though she took so much damage in the process- including shooting through her own deck to get the angle to engage Varuna- her helmsman ran her aground and her crew abandoned ship.

On to New Orleans

By dawn it was all over. Farragut had powered through the gauntlet, the Confederate flotilla was out of action and he was on his way to New Orleans.

When his 14 remaining vessels arrived on April 25th, he found an open city. Lovell had retreated, a mob gathered in the rain on the bank opposite the Federal fleet, but did not stop a couple of officers coming ashore and raising the stars and stripes. The only distant hope of the defenders- the unfinished CSS Mississippi- came floating downstream from the yards, on fire from stem to stern to deny her capture to the Union.

Back down at the forts, Porter kept up his bombardment until April 29th, when the enlisted men of Fort Jackson mutinied and surrendered. While the mortars had not done significant damage to the batteries or casemates of the fort, it had breached the levees in several places. The interior was starting to flood and conditions were deteriorating. Without the support of the larger Fort Jackson, Fort St Philip surrendered as well. CSS Lousiana, still stuck at the riverside, was blown up by her crew.

In short order, General Benjamin Butler followed the navy upriver with 18,000 troops to take possession of New Orleans. Farragut went on to take Baton Rouge and Natchez before being turned back by the guns at Vicksburg. Despite that reversal, the South simply didn’t have the resources to retake New Orleans, nor re-secure its great artery the Mississippi. The city would remain in Union hands until the end of the war, a severe blow to Confederacy that effectively teed up a second, arguably worse disaster: the loss of the Mississippi itself.

Conclusion

Tactical

Tactically speaking, it’s hard to imagine Farragut’s run of the forts succeeding without steam propulsion. The Mississippi is a huge river with a powerful current, obviously sailing ships had been travelling up the delta to New Orleans for over a 150 years by the time of the Civil War, but not at the kinds of speed that would allow them to blow through the barrage put up by Forts Jackson and St Philip without being crippled.

In a similar vein, both the Union and Confederate ships engaging on the river were so much more manoeuvrable because they were relying on screws or paddles instead of the wind. Forts had traditionally been significant deterrents to naval action: Nelson famously said a “Ship’s a fool to fight a fort.” But this was as much a component of the relatively limited ability of sailing vessels to manoeuvre as it was the comparative vulnerability of wooden ships and stone forts.

Thanks to the Battle of Forts Jackson and St Philip, along with other incidents in which Union naval forces successfully neutralised Confederate coastal fortifications, the Union became more comfortable considering ship-on-fort engagements. These did not all go the Union’s way, even later in the war with heavily armoured ironclads mounting much larger guns than Farragut’s fleet. In fact, the use of firepower to overwhelm enemy positions and force them to surrender, as Porter intended with his mortars, was- and still is- up in the air.

Overall, this was a transitional period in naval technology where the path forward was mixed up with dead-ends, diversions and contradictions. But the relationship between forts and ships was starting to change as the technological developments of the mid-19th Century bore fruit.

Strategic

Ultimately, this fuzzy tactical space in the 1860s allowed the US Navy to widen its strategic impact on the Confederacy. Being able or willing to go toe-to-toe with Southern coastal fortifications meant that the Federals did not have to restrict themselves to just blockading the south. From the start of the war they had taken measures to secure harbours and ports along the Confederate coastline, both to deny those locations to blockade runners and to serve as bases for Union ships, as well as pressuring the Confederacy to divert forces to secure its massive coastline.

These expeditions inevitably saw the North having to engage coastal batteries and forts. While Farragut and Porter were preparing to breach the Mississippi, other combined Navy-Army forces were operating against Confederate coastal fortifications in North Carolina. These may have been less substantial than Forts Jackson and St Philip, but they represented a toe in the door of strategic effect before Farragut kicked it open.

Seizing New Orleans was a major blow to the Confederacy. The loss of the city itself was serious enough, but it set the stage for increased pressure in the Mississippi theatre that culminated in 1863 with the fall of Vicksburg. With the Mississippi River firmly under Federal control, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and the Arizona Territory were carved off from rest of the South and the Union could concentrate on the eastern half of the Confederacy.

War is always a contest of wills as much as a contest in materiel, but with New Orleans gone and the Mississippi to follow, everything got harder for the Southern States. Blockade runners had lost a major port, the South’s already inferior industrial, agricultural and human resources had been reduced even further.

Confederate hopes of exploiting cotton exports as a diplomatic lever to encourage European intervention faded as well. Slim as the chances might have always been, the threshold for Britain and France to get involved had ratcheted up. A purely naval exercise in breaking the Union blockade and escorting cotton-laden Confederate vessels from New Orleans across the Atlantic was one thing. The kind of commitment involved in retaking the city from Union forces and going on to secure the cotton-producing hinterland was entirely another, especially given that the capture of New Orleans represented just one more sign that the Confederacy was not the horse to back in the Civil War.

That said, the South hung on for another four years after New Orleans. The reality of sea, and later air and space, power is that they cannot be decisive in and of themselves. They can only create the conditions for decisive action in the land domain. Even amphibious operations, with one boot wet, can only set the stage and introduce the characters. The real nails wouldn’t go into the Confederate coffin until Grant’s Overland Campaign and Sherman’s March to the Sea from 1864 onwards, but actions like the Capture of New Orleans did a lot to line those nails up.

End

So, that’s a quick look at the Capture of New Orleans in the American Civil War, a really interesting brownwater operation with strategic consequences. Hope you all enjoyed this episode of the War Room. If you’d like to see these videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube Memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.